Self-invested Personal Pensions

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I do not accept that the Government have acted unfairly and I would point out that the new rules were not due to come into effect until April of this year. This was all part of a simplification process which had wide support among savers, in the pensions industry and, I thought, across the parties. When the rules were originally introduced, the assessment was that allowing residential property into SIPPS would not induce a strong behavioural shift as the checks and balances in the new rules would not make investment in residential property appropriate for most people. In the event, it became clear that there was a groundswell and the provisions would be abused. That is why the Government acted. The Government said over many months previously that they would be prepared to act if there was abuse of the system.

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, the Minister must be aware that Ministers in another place consistently defended the decision to include residential property in SIPPS and gave no real indication that a change of mind would happen. That has meant that the pension industry has spent time and money gearing up for changes that were drawn away from them at the eleventh hour. What does the Minister have to say about the costs that have been incurred by the industry? Do the Government have any estimate of those costs?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, it is not possible to separate the costs associated with this part of the simplification process from the general broad thrust of the changes. However, I believe that it is not correct to say that Ministers did not put people on notice about what was happening. I could take you back to specific Answers including one made by my noble friend Lord McIntosh in your Lordships' House back in January 2005 when he indicated that these matters would be kept under review and the Government would act if there was abuse. That is the Government's position on this and other taxation matters as well.

Eurofighter Typhoon

Lord Drayson: My Lords, as I am sure the House will appreciate, an agreement of this magnitude is many years in the making and there is still some way to go yet. Yes, the RAF was fully consulted in the process and I am satisfied. In fact, there are a number of positive advantages to be gained from the increased commitment and the increased numbers of aircraft. We see this very much as a success story. It is positive for British industry. It is positive also for the RAF.

Lord Truscott: My Lords, I declare an interest as an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. Does my noble friend agree, as he briefly indicated, that the proposed Typhoon order would be a very good deal for British aerospace and especially for the highly skilled British workers who work in the sector?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, this is a relatively straightforward amendment to respond to a concern raised in the report by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The amendment revises Clause 4 so as to respond to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee's report, which drew attention to the fact that the current drafting of the clause would, in theory, mean that any document issued under an enactment—whoever issued it—would in theory be covered and could, again in theory as there is no intention whatever of doing so, be designated as an ID card under Clause 4.
	The Committee pointed out at paragraph 13 of its report that this would include:
	"Documents as varied as home information packs or solicitors' practising certificates: any document issued under statutory powers."
	That is clearly not the Government's intention. As has been stated many times previously, our policy is that the only documents that should be capable of being designated are ones issued in accordance with a statutory requirement by a government department or public authority on behalf of the Crown and not documents that are simply issued under statutory powers. We accept the committee's view that the Bill as drafted could technically be construed as wider than the Government's stated intentions and should therefore be amended. The revised form of words in the amendment uses the same formulation as in Clause 11(5), although of course for a quite different purpose. It provides a means of ensuring that the only documents that could be designated would be those issued by a Minister of the Crown, a government department or a devolved Administration.
	I hope that the wording, revised as I have just indicated, fully meets the legitimate concern raised by the committee. I again express the Government's thanks to the committee for the advice that it has provided in the report. I beg to move.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I rise briefly to formally welcome the amendment as moved by the Minister. It is not necessary for the House to look at it in more detail because we were given that opportunity when I pressed the Government on these matters in Committee and she was kind enough to give a full response at that stage. I support the amendments.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: This is very much a joint amendment between the opposition parties, as is Amendment No. 46 to delete Clause 6. We seek to replace compulsion by voluntarism. Citizens should not be forced to have ID cards. Compulsion is far too often resorted to by the modern state. That comes from an intensely managerial culture in which regulation rules. That sits uneasily with fundamental rights such as privacy and voluntarism. This Bill is an authentic clash between such rights and managerial efficiency.
	Clause 4 allows the Government to designate any official document so that obtaining or renewing one forces the applicant to apply for an ID card under Clause 5. The amendment gives the citizen a choice. Precisely the same amendment was moved on Report in the other place by the Labour Member for Walthamstow, Mr Gerrard, and it received cross-party support. The vote was lost by 32 votes.
	The Government have made it clear that they will, when ready, designate passports under Clause 4, which will eventually compel around 85 per cent of the adult population to have ID cards. The issue of compulsion runs deep. When Michael Howard proposed compulsory cards as Home Secretary in 1995, as I reminded the House last Monday, that was roundly condemned by Tony Blair. As Home Secretary, David Blunkett reverted to the Tory plan, although he called the cards "entitlement cards"—he rather hid the fact that the entitlement was for the state rather than the citizen.
	Who is to say how any of us might react if we were Home Secretary in a time of suicide bombers? Apparent security gains then tend to dominate thinking. These are just the circumstances where the job of opposition is to counterbalance that natural bias, to probe the proposed measures and to ensure that they are not likely to be counterproductive.
	As the House demonstrated last Monday, it already senses that the potential benefits of compulsory cards are exaggerated; that the financial and privacy costs are being underestimated; and that the whole relationship between the state and the citizen is at stake. We have, I fear, gradually become not just a nanny state, but a snooping state—a surveillance state. Both Houses have long been preoccupied by the declining health of our democracy, which is partly related to that. We have lost much of that essential,
	"vigour and cheerfulness of allegiance",
	as John Pym MP vividly put it 360 years ago—an allegiance which, if active and engaged, will do more to combat crime, withstand terrorism and grapple with the other problems purportedly ameliorated by the ID cards than they can ever do without that allegiance.
	Ministers repeatedly claim that the Government have a mandate for compulsion which it would be improper for us to frustrate. On page 52 of its 111 pages, under the heading "Strong and Secure Borders", the Labour 2005 manifesto said:
	"We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports".
	I repeat: "voluntary". So how can it possibly be argued that that is a mandate for a compulsory scheme? If as they now claim the intention all along was for the scheme to be compulsory, they only had to change one crucial word or add one clarifying phrase. The amendment is therefore consistent with the manifesto "voluntary" commitment, leaving this or any other government free to bring forward primary legislation if they want to compel later on. We believe that compulsion warrants nothing short of that.
	Ministers repeatedly say that we are only following Europe and that we are going to have to have EU biometric passports anyhow. The biometric passport, however, will have far less biometric information on it than that proposed for our ID cards, and none of the personal data in Schedule 1, the so-called "audit trail" data which will record when, where and for what purpose our ID card is used—not forgetting the huge commercial use to be made of the cards. As for the suggestion that we are just catching up with Europe, of the 23 countries for which the LSE identity project obtained comparative data, only 10 had compulsory cards; 10 had voluntary ones and three had none at all. What is more, most of the countries with compulsory cards had local databases. That is reflected in the fact that in the 10 countries with compulsory cards, citizens are charged an average of under £4 per card.
	I briefly revert to the standing of the LSE reports, since Mr Blair had another go at them last week, remarking that he did not think that they represented "an entirely objective assessment". Sir Howard Davies, director of the LSE, has felt it necessary to comprehensively scotch that slur in a letter to the Prime Minister last Friday. Nothing so convinces me of the inadequacy of government claims for compulsory cards as their persistent attempts to rubbish the scrupulous, detailed LSE work, while failing to produce a proper critique or adequate figures of their own.
	As I say, we are wholly unconvinced that a compulsory scheme would succeed in its own terms, even by its own principal yardstick, referred to five times by Mr Blair at Question Time last week; namely, protection against identity fraud or theft. The paper on this subject, produced by the Cabinet Office in 2002, has been severely undermined since by industry spokesmen, NGOs and the LSE report. Claims vis-à-vis money laundering, insurance fraud, card theft and so on are insecurely founded at best, but above all a voluntary scheme would allow citizens who believe in the efficacy of ID cards against identity frauds to have one. There is nothing to stop that under our scheme. Indeed, it would take account of some of the points made rather plangently by opposition Members about certain minority groups who want a card. That would be fine.
	Compulsion, in our view, is excessive, and excessive, ill-judged laws beget an equal and opposite response. Would-be terrorists feed off the extremism of those they view as their opponents. They will always outbid a democratic state in ruthlessness.
	A phrase that has been ringing in my ears as I have struggled to find a satisfactory way to explain my deep misgivings about all this is the one used by my wise lawyer father, now dead. He used to say, "You can't do that", in a certain tone of voice. That meant that if you go beyond a certain point you undermine the very institutions, principles and values that the law is there to protect and which have been our beacons. I can see him, or hear him, now, saying that about cutting back juries; about the latest idea that you can convict people of theft without going to court; about outlawing peaceful protest within a kilometre of this place without a permit; about criminalising robust, even offensive, free speech, on grounds that it might be taken as celebrating violence; about detaining people for months without charge or trial; about police arresting citizens for any conduct, vis-à-vis the mild protestor at the Labour Party conference.
	What about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, with that plethora of compulsive state powers? What about camera surveillance via literally millions of CCTV cameras—one for every 14 people in this country, by far the greatest number in the world—or the development of facial recognition technology and vehicle tracking technology, or the escalating use of mobile-phone tracking technology and the prospect of compulsory retention of communications data for up to six years? Every year there is more regulation, more compulsion and more surveillance. I can hear him say it: "You can't do that".
	As the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, studiously and publicly advised the country last October vis-à-vis this Bill:
	"The extent of the information retained as a core part of the National Identity Register is unwarranted and intrusive . . . It is difficult to see the relevance of all such details . . . Other systems of checks are perfectly feasible".
	He also warned explicitly as follows:
	"The Information Commissioner is concerned about the way in which demands will grow for individuals to prove their identity. The broad purposes permit function creep into unforeseen and perhaps unacceptable areas of private life".
	As one example of that, just consider how Parliament has dealt with the illegal retention in police records of 50,000 sets of fingerprints and DNA samples. Instead of expunging them and making sure that the illegality did not recur, this Government forced through Section 64 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act in 2001 to validate the illegality and, much worse, allowed fingerprints and DNA to be stored in future, whether or not any citizen had been convicted or even charged with an offence. This highly sensitive data are now held on more than 20,000 innocent juveniles. "Not innocent", I hear new Labour say, "we just didn't have the evidence". The writing really is on the wall.
	The amendment, far from being a wrecking one, is an enabling one. Given the doubts about the technology, the cost, the corruptibility, the human rights and cultural consequences of this compulsory scheme, a voluntary scheme will enable us to see just how it works before the country is jettisoned into compulsion. If ever a proposal warranted that degree of caution and prudence, this is it.

Lord Waddington: My Lords, I consider the amendment of great importance. It raises fundamental issues of liberty. Noble Lords will recall that in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith saw written on the walls of the Ministry of Truth "War is peace. Freedom is slavery". I was reminded of those words the other day when some noble Lords on the government Benches said that requiring a person to register, requiring a person to buy an identity card, was to grant him "a new kind of freedom". Those were the very words used by the noble Lord, Lord Gould, on 15 November last year, at col. 1012, when talking about these matters.
	I believe that most people will agree that while identity cards might bring some benefits to the individual, compulsory registration means an inroad on liberty and privacy and that when the Lord Chancellor said at the weekend that identity cards would make it easier for the citizen to deal with the state, what he really meant was that they would make it easier for the state to deal with the citizen.
	I can see that creeping compulsion is, from the point of view of the Home Office, a convenient way of proceeding. But is it really right that it should be a lottery as to when any particular person is, as it were, caught in the spider's web; that it should depend on a circumstance entirely outside the individual's control and for which he is in no way to blame, such as when his driving licence happens to come up for renewal? It will be a complete lottery. The Government's scheme means that the state will be saying to the individual: "You are entitled to a driving licence. You have done nothing wrong to disentitle you from having a driving licence. But we will not give you one unless you take a step which has nothing whatever to do with the requirements of the Road Traffic Acts and your ability to drive. We will not give you one unless you buy an identity card and submit to registration.". How on earth can that be right?
	The Government's scheme is capricious and unfair and we should not support it.

Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, in moving the amendment, made a comprehensive and persuasive speech. Therefore, I can be brief. He started, I think rightly, and as I was going to, by quoting from the Labour Party manifesto. There is a considerable contrast between the words quoted from the manifesto and the words used by the Minister on the fourth day of our proceedings, when she said:
	"However, in a system that has been designed from the outset to be compulsory—it has been said that we will introduce it in stages, but always within the context of a compulsory scheme—it is difficult to see what is stealth-like about that. It has been very open".
	She went on:
	"In order to phase in the introduction of ID cards and avoid any big-bang move to compulsion, it has always been our intention that certain documents would be designated under Clause 4".—[Official Report, 12/12/05; col. 1008.]
	Those words "big-bang move to compulsion" have a certain resonance in this situation.
	My noble friend was absolutely right when he talked about creeping compulsion. The noble Baroness said that she could see nothing stealth-like about this. But, clearly, the Government believe—and I do not challenge them—that many people find the idea of having an identity card for some purposes quite attractive and will therefore go along with it, particularly if it is doled out relatively painlessly when, in any case, you have to apply for the renewal of a passport, or whatever else may be created as a designated document later.
	However, the issue is not just about identity cards. It is certainly understandable that if you have a passport you may feel that an identity card, for example, is a useful tool for getting rather more simply around Europe. I do not challenge that. But the point of this amendment is that it is attached to a clause that deals with the register. The register is at the heart of the criticisms made about this Bill.
	The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, quoted from the Information Commissioner and the extent of the information that is to be held on the register. It seems to me that while it may be useful and convenient to have an identity card, you should not—certainly not until the Government have made it plain that they can manage this whole scheme and deal with the criticisms made in our debates—be forced to go on the register. One thing people are entitled to know is that the register will work in a manageable way and will not have the potential weaknesses identified during our debates.
	I did not take part in the debate last Thursday in this House initiated by my noble friend Lord Marlesford about the firearms register and the failure of the Home Office to meet the statutory requirements imposed on it by Parliament in 1997. It is an appalling story of incompetence—and worse—by the Home Office in introducing a scheme that Parliament believed was necessary.
	One feature that struck me about that debate, when I read it, was the extraordinary generosity of those noble Lords taking part. They somehow forgave Ministers—indeed, were nice to them—as they defended the government position. The Ministers said it was all absolutely appalling; they said, "Of course, it is shocking that we have been unable to introduce a workable scheme". They kept saying, "We are as disappointed as anyone in this Chamber". Yet those Ministers are responsible for their department. If they are incapable of setting up a firearms register in eight years, why should we imagine that they are capable of setting up the register required under this Bill in an acceptable and workable way? Until they have proved their capacity to do that job, I do not believe that we should accept people being compelled to have their names on the register. I warmly support the amendment being moved.

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I want to make a quick comment. The Bill will go through Parliament whether we like it or not. However, before the entire thing becomes final and properly compulsory, we should go only into a voluntary phase to test the idea. That is why I approve of this amendment, for it means that the first people to volunteer to try that out—which will be several million people, since many people approve of it—can at least self-select who will be doing that.
	Your Lordships must remember that the Bill currently provides that when you are next issued with a passport or driving licence, Clause 12 applies to you. It is worth looking quickly at what that clause insists you do. It applies to you, remember, and not to refugees, who have their own thing, or to people who are already here illegally because they will be in hiding anyway. I was reminded of how people such as escaped prisoners hid from the Germans during the war—not easily, but it was done. If it is really thought that all the illegal immigrants are going to be rounded up just because some people are carrying ID cards, then you have another think coming.
	The bit which will apply to you from day one, when you are given your next passport or driving licence, is:
	"An individual . . . must notify the Secretary of State about . . . every prescribed change of circumstances . . . within the prescribed period . . . the Secretary of State may require him to . . . otherwise . . . provide such information as may be required",
	to verify
	"the information that may be entered",
	and otherwise ensure
	"that there is a complete, up-to-date and accurate entry . . . An individual"—
	that is, you, if contravening any of these requirements—
	"shall be liable to a civil penalty not exceeding £1,000".
	So, if noble Lords do not vote for the amendment, they are accepting that they will fulfil all those details the next time they renew their passport or driving licence. Personally, until we have decided that Parliament will proceed to compulsion, I believe that the scheme should be entirely voluntary.

Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Phillips and the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, referred to the Labour Party manifesto from the previous election. Looking at the Bill, one sees that of 45 clauses, three relate to identity cards. The offences in Clauses 27 to 32 relate to the register. It is about setting up a national identity register to which the identity card is an adjunct.
	If one looks at the manifesto, under the heading "Strong and secure borders", the Labour Party set out that,
	"Across the world there is a drive to increase the security of identity documents and we cannot be left behind. From next year we are introducing biometric 'ePassports'. It makes sense to provide citizens with an equally secure identity card to protect them at home from identity theft and clamp down on illegal working and fraudulent use of public services. We will introduce ID cards"—
	that phrase is set out in large type on page 55—
	"including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports".
	The emphasis in the manifesto is entirely on identity cards as some form of home passport. It does not set out a compulsory scheme for the introduction of a national identity register, with all the requirements set out in the various schedules. So the Government cannot rely on the manifesto at the election as authorising the scheme that they now put forward in the Bill.

Viscount Bledisloe: My Lords, a question occurred to me during the earlier speeches. One document to which this is intended to apply is a passport. A passport used to be a document that, in loud and ringing terms, if the Government were kind enough to give you one, commanded other governments to assist your travel and let you go freely around their country. It is now a document that you must have before you are allowed to travel at all. Instead of being a privilege given by the government, it is now compulsory. Apparently, now, if I want that document, without which I cannot travel—to exercise the freedom to which I am entitled of travelling to anywhere in the world—not only do I have to apply and pay for it, as I have always had to, I must allow my particulars, to be entered on a different register and pay extra to get an identity card.
	Is it compatible with the freedom of the individual and the Human Rights Act that one shall be debarred from exercising the freedom to move about the world unless one "chooses" to go on some other government register and to pay them an extra fee for that privilege? Surely that provision is bound to be struck down as contrary to human rights.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the noble Lord says that he is listening to me. I hope that he will because I have been around a long time. Indeed, I was in the Labour Party for 54 years. It was a Labour Party which would not have dreamt of bringing forward a Bill of this kind. Nor in fact would it have brought forward many of the measures which the noble Lord, Lord Philips, outlined in his opening speech.
	I repeat that some of those measures have the elements of a fascist state. This country is preaching to many other countries about democracy. It wants democracy in Iraq; it wants democracy in Iran. It wants democracy everywhere except perhaps in this country whereby the measures that it is introducing are undermining the democracy which has been built up over many hundreds of years. I do not deny that those are strong statements. But the fact of the matter is that there is a creeping competence for all kinds of authorities in this country to have control over the individual.
	Let us consider some of the incidents of late. An author on the BBC makes a certain statement about homosexuals and before long the police are telephoning her or are on her doorstep asking her to justify those statements. That is just one instance. The police are becoming the arbiters of free speech. That is very serious indeed. Members of this House and of the House of Commons should understand exactly how their freedoms are being undermined by a host of measures which are coming forward piecemeal. If they do not do so they will find themselves in a state where the Government have complete and utter control over the individual; and, of course, in this country the freedom of the individual has always been the bedrock of our very democracy which we have exported, and still seek to export, to other countries. If we are not careful, there is a real danger that we shall be in the sort of society which many of us fought against in the last war.
	I know that my former noble friends do not like to hear me say these things, but perhaps it is proper that I should say them because I had been in the Labour Party for 54 years before they expelled me and therefore I do know what the Labour Party that I joined stood for. It did not stand for measures such as the identity card now being put forward by new Labour.
	We have before us a Bill that, in the first instance, is supposed to be a voluntary scheme. We have been assured that it will not be necessary, and that the Government will never make it necessary, for identity cards to be carried at all times. Yet on the "Any Questions" programme broadcast last Friday the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, first, that they should be compulsory and that if they were not, they would not be any good; and, secondly, that they should be carried at all times. In other words, the police will be able to come up to you and say, "Papers", whether they say "please" or not.

Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I wonder if I can possibly help the Government. It seems that they have built a high and strong stone wall behind them and that the Pyramus and Thisby on the Front Bench opposite are feeling embarrassed and so have encouraged their colleagues not to support them in order to get the legislation out of the way quickly. There is a fairly simple solution to all this, one that goes to an amendment I have tabled for consideration later: the passport is actually a voluntary document. According to the Government, biometric passports were to have been introduced in October of last year. With the biometric passport will go the new identity card, which will also be voluntary. Since 80 or 90 per cent of this country's population already have passports and could be issued with the identity cards at a cost of less than £10, it seems logical to encourage as many people as possible to register with the passports authority in order that they may have a simple identity card.
	As your Lordships will be aware, the main people who do not carry passports are those of retirement age, half of whom do not carry them. Thus it would be a simple matter to issue passports to everyone, possibly free of charge, in the same way as we receive bus passes—which are, of course, a proof of identity. That would be voluntary. A passport is a voluntary document; the fact that you cannot travel without it is an encouragement to have one if you want to travel. But the idea of what should have been called the identity cards register is very worrying, and the Government should think of—I have forgotten the chap—Sisyphus, I think, who rolled his stone up the hill, and then it came rolling down. They may shortly be overwhelmed.
	The noble Lord, Lord Swindon, struck a chord with me when he spoke about fascism and those awful phrases you would hear in some parts of Europe, often in German, such as "Papier, bitte", followed by "Papiers nicht in ordnung"—I apologise for using a foreign language—and it struck me that I should ask these countries. I have beside me an Act of Parliament from one of those former fascist countries. It has 46 clauses, not 45, that are designed to protect the individual from exactly the sort of thing we are now trying to introduce. I shall read it rather than say it: it is the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, the German law that says that the individual is free, the data is his, it may not be transferred from one government department to another, and he also has Hoheit, or the intellectual property.
	It is strange to me, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Swindon, that after all these years we should be swinging so far backwards and recognising that most of the new members of the EU are longing for the days when they are not required to carry papers with them day and night, and where officials do not have the right to misread papers should it suit them in order to intern someone.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I strongly support this important amendment. The debate has ranged widely over the whole issue of compulsion. I have amendments later on that address how the move should be made from the initial period to one of compulsion for all. I shall keep my remarks on that rather more focused matter until I move the amendments to leave out Clauses 6 and 7.
	The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, spoke with both passion and, in his own way, compulsion about the problems we face with this Bill, the tension between compulsion and voluntarism, and the whole issue of what we may face if we allow what is a flawed Bill to go ahead with this drafting of Clause 5. We are on Report, so I will not go into the arguments on that. Suffice it to say that I agree entirely with his arguments on that score. Some of my speeches today will be even briefer than usual, as noble Lords can tell by the tone of my voice that the bug that is going round the House has found its way finally to me.
	The Government have not persuaded me that their system, which forces us to sign up to a gargantuan register with its intrusive audit trail of recording every part of our lives, is the right way forward. That is not the system which the public think is waiting in the wings. As ever, we on this side have no criticism of the Minister. She is a supreme advocate, but she has not been given the right material with which to work in this case. I dare to suggest that even the noble Baroness cannot make a silk purse out of this sow's ear.
	My noble friend Lord Waddington talked about creeping compulsion and asked whether it should be a lottery regarding when any individual should be caught in the web. He referred in particular to applying for driving licences. I note that in Committee the Minister said that at the moment the Government have no plans to designate driving licences, but Clause 4 gives them that opportunity. In Committee I asked the Minister whether she would categorically give the assurance that the Government would therefore not seek to overturn the decision of this House in the Road Safety Bill when we removed Clauses 29 and 30, which gave the Government in that Bill the authority to withdraw current driving licences. That could be used to issue driving licences to all and require registration and the issuing of an ID card. If the noble Baroness can give us that assurance today, it would be helpful. I have tabled a later amendment on which I can explore that matter in more detail.
	The objective of this group of amendments is admirably simple: to require the Government to keep to their manifesto commitment that they would introduce ID cards,
	"including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports".
	As we have heard this afternoon, that is not what this Bill does. What it says is that if you apply for a passport, you must apply to go on the national identity register and therefore have an ID card. As noble Lords have asked, what is voluntary about that?
	In Committee, the Minister estimated that by the end of the initial period, about 85 per cent of the population would have been forced to have an ID card as a result of applying for passports and going on the register. That is not what any normal person reading the manifesto would have expected. It was put with great clarity in another place by the Minister's honourable friend Mr Neil Gerrard when he moved this amendment. He said:
	"Any normal person—by that I mean people outside this place—would interpret that as, 'When I renew my passport, I can choose whether to go on the register and have an ID card'. That is what 'initially voluntary' would mean to anyone who read it".—[Official Report, Commons, 18/10/05; col. 748.]
	I entirely agree with him. The amendment would make it possible to be issued with a designated document without being forced to go on the national identity register. The individual would have a real choice, and can choose to go on the register and have an ID card—there is nothing to stop them.
	If the Government intended to make it compulsory to have an ID card from the word go when you apply for a passport, they should have said so clearly in the manifesto. But the obfuscation has continued in our debates. In Committee the Minister said:
	"There is no need for any person who does not wish to put his name on the register to so register unless and until it becomes compulsory".—[Official Report, 15/11/05; col. 998.]
	I reflected very carefully on what the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, said because a little later, on 12 December, the Minister said:
	"They can either apply for a new passport and get an ID card at the same time; or not get a new passport".—[Official Report, 12/12/05; col. 1069.]
	The Government's definition of "voluntary" is very different from anything that I have ever come across. It is a case of, "have an ID card or don't leave the country". That is not right. I support the amendment.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, it was debated at length in the Commons and debated in this House. To put this to rest, I shall be happy to go through the chronology, because we need to make sure that the issue is finally dealt with comprehensively.
	The first phase was to enable a sensible phased introduction of identity cards. Once passports and residence permits are designated it means that, as British nationals resident in the United Kingdom renew or apply for their passports, and as foreign nationals apply for or renew their residence permits, they will be entered on the national identity register and issued with ID cards. That should not come as a surprise to anyone, as I have said. When the Government issued our first consultation document in 2002 on what were then termed "entitlement cards"—the noble Lord referred to that in opening this debate—one of the options canvassed was for a universal scheme linked to passports. When we announced the decision in principle to introduce identity cards—as long ago as November 2003—it was made clear that there would be a two-stage scheme. Again, it was stated that the second stage would be compulsory but, in the first stage, as well as introducing a voluntary plain identity card for those who did not have a passport, it was made clear that the intention was to link the issue of identity cards to that of more secure passports.
	Indeed, we stated in Identity Cards: The next steps—Cm 6020, the policy document published at the time—that:
	"By linking the card scheme to widely held identity documents most people will get a card conveniently and automatically as they renew an existing document".
	When we published the draft Identity Cards Bill in April 2004, not only was "must" included in Clause 5(2), just as it is now, but it was also in Clause 8(6) in the draft Bill, which is equivalent to Clause 8(7) in the present Bill. Again, we were very clear that in the first stage of the scheme there would be no possibility of obtaining a designated document, such as a passport, without an identity card.
	Paragraph 2.17 of the consultation paper on the draft Bill—Cm 6178—stated:
	"Once a document such as a passport has been designated as an ID card, this will be the only form in which it will be available—i.e. there will be no 'non-ID card' variants. It would undermine confidence in the system if there were to be identity documents available on demand at different levels of security".??

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I of course take note of what the noble Baroness said. Therefore, I shall remind the House what the report of the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords stated about the convention at Recommendation 7:
	"The principles underlying the 'Salisbury Convention' remain valid and should be maintained. A version of the 'mandate' doctrine should continue to be observed: where the electorate has chosen a party to form a Government, the elements of that party's general election manifesto should be respected by the second chamber. More generally, the second chamber should be cautious about challenging the clearly expressed views of the House of Commons on public policy issue. It is not possible to reduce this to a simple formula, particularly one based on manifesto commitments".
	In this regard, the Government have been absolutely clear that their policy was for identity cards; that their policy was for compulsory cards; and that this is the way in which we seek to deliver them. It was our clear intention throughout the period 2002 to 2005, before the general election, that this procedure would be adopted; that is, the same procedure that comes before the House today. It would not be right to resile from that position now.
	I shall deal briefly with some of the issues that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Marsh, made a good point when he said that we either have a compulsory scheme or that we do not. The arguments for compulsion are strong. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, sought to compare the firearms register with this register. I remind him that we have chosen the Passport Agency because it has a proven track record of delivery—on time, on budget—and it has gained the confidence of the public. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said quite rightly that this ID card scheme is going to happen anyway. I agree with him. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, I say that this scheme will be able to deal with the human rights of individuals, particularly in relation to the issues raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe. This issue was looked at comprehensively. I can reassure the noble Viscount that a compulsory identity card scheme is compatible with our international obligations, including the European Convention on Human Rights. In its report on the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights confirmed at paragraph 4.5:
	"A requirement to have or to carry some form of identity cards does not of itself raise human rights issues as has been established by the European Court of Human Rights. Many Council of Europe countries operate identity card schemes which are generally considered to comply with the ECHR".

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I am grateful to all of those who spoke in the debate, which has gone on for an hour and 10 minutes. I note that not one speaker spoke in favour of the Government's position on the matter. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her response, but she did not address one of the arguments in my opening speech. I like to think that that was because she was unable to answer any of the points that I made. It is breathtaking that the noble Baroness ended her defence of the Government's position by saying that they have a clear manifesto entitlement. If ever a matter was not merely not clear but rather clearer in the opposite direction has been made manifestly plain this afternoon. This is a very important matter on which the opinion of the House should be tested.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, we are romping through this afternoon with this wonderful co-operation between my Benches and those of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. I am sure that Members of the Benches opposite will have a great debt to pay to these Benches by the end of the day as the, shall we say, feisty parts of the debate are being dealt with so speedily. That is my excuse for that interchange and I will stop at that before I sink myself further.
	In moving Amendment No. 46, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 52, 52H and 54A. Amendment No. 46 would remove Clause 6 from the Bill and the other amendments are consequential to that. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the transition from a so-called voluntary system of ID cards into an all-out compulsory scheme should be made by primary legislation. It is consistent with the Government's commitment in their manifesto that the scheme would be rolled out initially on a voluntary basis. The transition to full compulsion, we say, is a matter of public importance. This is a skeleton Bill and we need to be able to respond effectively to the impact of the so-called voluntary period of registration on the whole process of people entering upon the register, obtaining an ID card and then entering the changes on that register as they move or their circumstances change.
	The Government want that transition to all-out compulsion to be made by order, albeit by the novel process of a super-affirmative statutory instrument. We acknowledge that this is an improvement on the usual affirmative procedure, but we believe that it is not robust enough to allow for proper parliamentary consideration of the operation and costs of the ID card scheme during the initial period.
	In Committee, I asked the Government to justify the super-affirmative process itself and to explain how it would operate if the House ultimately decided that it would be right to go down this route instead of insisting on primary legislation. There was a very full debate at cols. 1058 to 1073 on 12 December. Since we are on Report I will summarise only the major parts of that debate.
	We submit that the Government have not yet proved the case for all-out compulsion based on the provisions of the Bill. The Bill—an enabling Bill—leaves significant questions unanswered. The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, at paragraph 248 of its 4th Report 2003–04, said:
	"The move to compulsion is a step of such importance that it should only be taken after the scrutiny afforded by primary legislation: the proposed super-affirmative procedure is not adequate".
	We agree with that. The House of Lords Constitution Committee, in paragraph 9 of its Third Report 2005–06, concluded:
	"it would be preferable to separate the two phases in order that the compulsory phase would have to be introduced by primary legislation. This would enable Parliament to ensure that the legislation fully reflected experience gained, especially about safeguards, during the voluntary phase".
	Again, we agree with that view.
	The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee's view, into which I went in some detail in Committee, is that the route to full compulsion—primary or secondary legislation—is to be judged appropriate by one's view on whether or not the initial period is voluntary and whether the House approves of all-out compulsion. At paragraph 20, the committee says that if,
	"one considers . . . this Bill as introducing a voluntary scheme which may gradually be extended towards compulsion . . . then the power in clause 6 is inappropriate and a compulsory scheme should only be introduced by means of a bill".
	As we recognised in our previous debates, the Government have repeatedly said that the initial period is voluntary. By agreeing to our Amendment No. 38, this House has ensured that the initial period is what the Government have always said it was—voluntary. We continue to believe that any change from that initial voluntary period to one of all-out compulsion must be made by primary legislation.
	Our problem with the super-affirmative proposal is that, although interesting, it is no solution to the real question. Would that process ensure that the legislation fully reflected the views of both Houses about the experience gained, especially about safeguards? We feel that it would not.
	At Second Reading, I referred to my concerns about the super-affirmative process, in that it would not allow your Lordships' House full powers of amendment and rejection. I referred to the debate in another place on 12 July, when the Minister responsible for the Bill, Mr. Burnham, was asked:
	"What happens if one House modifies and the other does not? What procedure is followed thereafter?"
	The Minister responded in this vein:
	"I guess that the procedure would be the same as it is now; the elected House, with primacy, would prevail. I would not want there to be any procedure other than that. I will get back to the hon. Gentleman with regard to the detail of how the process would work on the Floor of the House, but from my point of view it is clear that the elected House will ultimately determine whether and how the order goes forward".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 12/7/05; col. 216.]
	The noble Baroness dealt with my queries in Committee with her usual great courtesy and tried to persuade me that I need not be too concerned. She gave significant assurances. She said that,
	"my honourable friend was probably referring to the final way in which we would have to implement this if the super-affirmative procedure was not adopted. I think he meant that if both Houses did not agree, ultimately it would be up to the other place to determine the matter by primary legislation".—[Official Report, 12/12/05; col. GC1070.]
	The difficulty is that the Minister with policy direction of this matter has not taken the opportunity to confirm either to this House or to another place whether what the noble Baroness thinks is what he probably meant is in fact the case. I am aware that Ministers in another place acknowledged in the press during last summer that they knew that there were problems with the super-affirmative process, but we have heard no more of that.
	Whatever the position on that matter—whether we can between us resolve that there is a power of this House both to modify and then reject the super-affirmative process—I would say more. I would say that that is still not the appropriate method by which to move from the so-called voluntary period to one of all-out compulsion. I believe so simply because our discussion of the Bill during six days in Committee and, so far, two days on Report has shown that the information about it is so lacking, the costs so obscure in everything but their massive size, and the details as yet so far from being determined that, even if the scheme were to go ahead on a genuinely voluntary basis, then substantial change would inevitably be needed. That can properly be done only by the mechanism of primary legislation. We believe that Parliament is owed nothing less than that. I beg to move.

Lord Waddington: My Lords, no one seriously doubts that there is a difference in principle between a scheme which is voluntary—even if it only partly voluntary, as a result of requirements to register if certain steps are taken—and one which makes registration compulsory. There is a world of difference between them. How can it possibly be right to move from a compulsory scheme by the use of secondary legislation, even with the super-affirmative procedure? That is the question.
	If the use of the super-affirmative procedure meant that both Houses had to agree that the time had come when the scheme should become compulsory, I would have thought that the super-affirmative procedure provided a real safeguard. Yet, as my noble friend has pointed out, that is not the case at all. The Government apparently take the view that this House would have no right to reject an order under Section 7 making the scheme compulsory. That is certainly what the Minister said in Committee in the Commons on 12 July at col. 216. He said that the elected House will decide whether the order making cards compulsory will go forward. In other words, the Government are saying that this step of grave principle, making the scheme compulsory, can be taken on the say-so of the Commons without even the safeguard of the Parliament Act to ensure that there was delay while further thought was given to the proposal. It is quite wrong for the state to make a voluntary scheme compulsory without primary legislation.

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, this amendment is essential. During the early stages of seeing whether the ID card scheme works, we will see examples of petty officialdom acting ultra vires and trying to control movements when they should not do so. Perhaps it will be irritating to have your position vis-à-vis parking fines and other minor infringements checked before you leave the country to go on holiday. That is perfectly feasible and probably sensible, but what if an appeal is pending and it has not been registered properly? What if one evening you are mugged or your pocket is picked and your ID card is lost, but you have to travel shortly afterwards; how will you get another ID card to do so? Those noble Lords who have tried to use their House of Lords ID card to get on an aeroplane to Scotland will know that it is not a sufficient proof of identity.
	Lots of issues may arise. In the light of our experience, we may want to return to primary legislation to introduce stronger safeguards for the ordinary citizen. To trust an executive department of state to introduce those protections is foolhardy. History has taught us that that is unwise.
	We should also remember that all the assurances given to us by the noble Baroness on the Front Bench, while completely honest at the moment, must be taken in the light that no Parliament can bind its successor. After the next general election, Ministers may well change their minds entirely. Indeed, on certain other issues we have seen the same Minister come back to this House with completely different opinions after a general election. None of this is set in stone and therefore it must be set out in primary legislation. Indeed, we may well find by then that local authority entitlement cards and others of that nature are quite sufficient for our purposes, and that we do not need to waste our money. Perhaps we will want to introduce legislation to ensure that they are better used. So many different things could come out of the trial period we are about to enter that merely to move on to the next stage by a super-affirmative order-making procedure is foolish and foolhardy. We must go back to primary legislation in order to move further down this track.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I do not want to enter the private grief of noble Lords opposite, but it was clear that their position was divided. I see the noble Baroness shaking her head. There was a difference in the positions adopted by her then leader, Michael Howard, and the then spokesman for home affairs about the approach.
	We made it absolutely clear that this was a major issue; the Government put their agenda to the public on the basis of the Bill; and the public spoke. The Government are of the view that this Bill is the primary legislation. It is for this House to decide whether a compulsory scheme is the right way forward. We agree with the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that, bearing in mind that the Government have adopted the latter construct in paragraph 20 of its report, this would be the best way forward. I invite the noble Baroness and the noble Lord to withdraw their amendment.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 46) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 198; Not-Contents, 140

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, Amendments Nos. 52B and 52E would require holders of identity cards to provide consent before information can be recorded on their card. I hope to provide noble Lords with some reassurance about what will be held on the card. Although perhaps well-intentioned, the amendments would undoubtedly hamper the effective operation of an ID card scheme, and would not build the desired public trust in the scheme that noble Lords seek.
	The scenario envisaged introduces a pick-and-choose system for the contents of an ID card, which is unprecedented for official documentation. The information recorded on passports, driving licences, birth certificates, and so on, is largely uniform, and there is no evidence of significant public dissatisfaction with that approach. Similarly, banks and building societies do not ask customers what information they wish to place on the chip of their credit or debit card; nor have they reported that a clamour of people are wishing to find out. The same applies with enquiries on the information held on the machine reader zone on passports. Instead such a system may lead to unintended negative consequences, as the Government have previously stated.
	It is intended that the identity card for British nationals will serve as a travel document that is recognised under International Civil Aviation Organisation regulations for travel within the EEA. In addition, identity cards for foreign nationals are intended to serve as residence permits. In order to fulfil those roles, the identity card will be designed to meet international standards that govern the format and information to be held on these documents. However, if the amendments were passed, there would be no guarantee that all the cards would meet those standards, creating confusion when handling those documents at key points, such as border controls.
	Such lack of uniformity among the identity cards may also lead to problems. It would not only be operationally difficult to manage and drive up costs, it may also undermine trust in the scheme and create problems for the cardholder. Again, there would be confusion between the hundreds of variations of identity cards in circulation. User organisations and other individuals may also wonder why a person has chosen to include one field and exclude another, leading to unnecessary questions.
	I reassure noble Lords that I appreciate their interest and concern about what information will be on the card. I assure them that the Government have no intention of placing any unusual or surprising information on the card. As we stated in Committee, we will not be placing any personal information on the chip that the cardholder does not already know about. Indeed, the Secretary of State does not have the power to place information on the card at will. Instead, Parliament must approve the information to be recorded on the card, as laid down in regulations subject to affirmative procedure.
	In practice, the information held on the identity card for British nationals is not anticipated to vary much from the information found on a passport. In addition, it is currently anticipated that the format of the card and the contents of the chip will be explained in information materials made available to each cardholder, and an individual would be free to make a data subject access request under the Data Protection Act if they wished to make a further check. There will be, as the Government have stated, no address or telephone number held on the face of the card. If verification of address is necessary, it can be done against the register. What appears on the card will be set out in affirmative regulations.
	The noble Baroness sees her amendment as benign, but her desire to break the link between the card and register, if these amendments were agreed to, would seriously undermine the effectiveness of the scheme. I do not think that is entirely what the noble Baroness wants; I hope it is not. Noble Lords on the main opposition Benches have said that ultimately they believe in a voluntary scheme, and I am sure that the noble Baroness would want that scheme to be effective. We happen to believe that the scheme can only be effective if it is ultimately compulsory, universal and uniform in its main aspects. I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendments.

Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I rise with something of a heavy heart. This amendment started its life as a simple apostrophe. I had intended to try to find out whether the Short Title of the Bill was correct. I may feel moved to move an amendment to the Short Title to change it from "Identity Cards Bill" to "Identity Register Bill". In the meantime, in seeking as ever to be brief, I looked at whether an apostrophe might effectively be the best way of drafting this amendment. I wanted to know what would happen if I put an apostrophe in "Cards", either before or after the "s". I sat upstairs with some eminent people in the Public Bills Office, who said that apostrophes were not acceptable, meaning that they are not acceptable for things. We looked at all the Bill titles with apostrophes, and they had to do with people. For example, if I introduced a Bill called "Lord Bassam's Benefits of Brighton and Hove Albion Bill", there could be an apostrophe after "Bassam". It was not otherwise possible, they told me.
	While I was there, a noble Lord who I shall not mention came in. I asked whether he was good on English, and he said that he had just become president of the English Speaking Union and felt that he might consult. My question was whether, in "Identity Cards", we are talking of one card or lots of cards. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal, will answer this later. When she talked about super-affirmative, I thought that she might be speaking as a form of Mary Poppins: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". Or was she some wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel, or something else? She charmingly fails to tell the whole truth, possibly because she does not know it.
	My question is simple. If we ask people whether they would benefit from the right to have an identity card, I am sure that more than 72 per cent would say so. If we ask them whether they want this information on a central registry, 72 per cent would probably say no. The right solution is somewhere between the registry and the benefit of the card. If we have a central register and it provides information from which identity cards are produced, does that mean that each identity card is identical, or does it mean that there is a different identity card for different purposes, as associated with the appropriate document?
	For example, on what I call a national identity card—the biometric card that goes with a passport—there will be certain standard information. Surely that card will not contain all the data about a particular individual from the register but only the same data as is contained on other peoples' passports. That is an important issue, because if by any chance there is additional data from the register on those cards which is not standard to other people, the sensitivity of the reader is such that other countries may well be able to lift that data. That would not be in our national interests.
	How many different types of identity cards will there be? I regard the standard identity card as the one that goes with the biometric passport, which will have certain defined data and is still a voluntary card. It is a card that people may well want.
	I should like to correct the remarks of the noble Baroness from the last time I intervened, when she said that I had said that all passports should be issued free. I did not. I said that as the bulk of people who did not have passports were over the age of retirement, it might be a nice gesture—they might not want to travel—if, as they reach a certain mature age, they could have one, or a card, that would be free. Might there not be an identity card, if it is not the one linked to the passport, that has on it your age, entitlement to a pension, or things of that sort? There may be another one associated with your driving licence or, one day, a gun licence. This is where I find it hard to understand where we are coming from or going to.
	The amendment should really only have been introducing an apostrophe, and I gather that, if we were all agreed, it could have one. I think it should be called the "Identity Card's Bill". If, however, it is to be the "Identity Cards' Bill", will the noble Baroness tell me where the apostrophe should go?
	In the supplementary part of the amendment, I have suggested that anyone who receives an identity card should when he receives it get a nice friendly letter from the Minister responsible, with her email address and direct telephone number, advising them that she is proud enough to have received a gold card or whatever it might be which offers certain privileges, such as the ability to identify yourself in particular situations and would contain given information. As I asked the noble Baroness the other day, what documentation issued by which government department is proof of identity for which purposes? She sent me a fairly unclear reply, because the matter is not clear. It would therefore be nice if—if we are issuing these identity cards—we removed all these other pieces of paper as proof of identity. That would provide the voluntary encouragement to have one.
	Almost daily we receive direct mail offering us all sorts of Switch cards and other cards setting out what information is on that card. Would it not be polite, proper and gentlemanly to write a letter telling the individual what is on the central register, thereby building a relationship where people would have the right to ask whether something might be removed unless it were absolutely essential—such as the wrong address or a little slip made by a computer operator or typist which changes the postcode by one digit? That can have a major impact on someone's life.
	My position is unchanged. I believe that the ultimate proof of identity is an individual's passport. The introduction of a simple identity card linked to that passport, with all the biometric data it, is the right way to go. I suggest that that is the only way to go. The second stage—when various government departments feel that it would be helpful to everybody—would be to have an identity card that may be associated with your driving licence and may automatically write to you when you reach the age of 70, requiring you to have a new eye test. Perhaps it could be recorded on it the number of times you have been caught by a speeding camera or all that other data. People would not mind if they knew. If that driving licence/identity card was acceptable, it would be perfect.
	On human relations, we should give people the right to approve their photograph on these cards. There may be a different photograph on each. We should also give them the right to add any of the identifying marks that have historically been associated with passports.
	This is not a frivolous amendment; it is simply a request for a simple answer. What is the maximum number of different identity cards that we think we will be issuing, and for what purposes? I beg to move.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I personally thank the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, for clarifying that I had misunderstood him in relation to the free passports. I had thought that, in answering the other amendment, the noble Lord was suggesting that all stand-alone cards would be free. I now understand what he was saying.
	I hope that the noble Lord will remember that, when we were debating this before, I tried to make clear that it would be possible, in due course, for us to look at whether there may be a category of persons who would not need to register, because of either their age or level of infirmity. However, I very much took on board the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, who asserted that many people, notwithstanding their age, might wish to have this right and/or other provisions reducing the amount of money that we may seek to levy on them.
	I am sure that the noble Lord would not like the apostrophe either to be before the "s" or between the "d" and the "s", because, as he knows, that would be appallingly bad grammar. It would suggest that the Bill belonged to either one or to many identity cards. I know that the noble Lord, with his normal attention to detail, would not wish that.
	Perhaps it is not therefore surprising that the Public Bill Office was reluctant to agree to that, but I know that the noble Lord has a serious point about how many cards we are contemplating. I assure him that it is not our intention that individuals could normally hold more than one card. Indeed, while a person may record in his register entry details of another name he is known by, it will not be possible to have a card in each name.
	However, there are a few exceptions: a person under a witness protection scheme who needs to be provided with a second identity, or a very small number of transgender individuals who are in the transition stage of living in their birth and acquired identities. It is planned, subject to certain checks, to provide such individuals with an opportunity to have two cards in order to take account of their needs and to comply with the spirit of recent gender-recognition legislation. Of course, where two cards are issued in such a circumstance, that fact will be recorded in the technical data for the entry. While this is not to be revealed during a normal day-to-day transaction, the information will be available to prevent misuse. Only one card would ever be valid for travel.
	Looking at the number of cards possible, just so that we have it absolutely clear, there will be: an identity card for British citizens, issued alongside the British passport and also valid as a travel document; a stand-alone identity card, issued to British citizens who do not hold a passport, and valid for travel in Europe; a plain ID card, not valid for travel and available to British or Irish citizens resident in the United Kingdom; and ID cards linked to residence permits and other immigration documents issued to foreign nationals. Those are the cards that we anticipate being made available.

Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I hesitate to rise again, but my noble friend has raised some ancillary issues which come up where a particular card might help. Not least, there are the backpackers and the young who, when travelling around the world on their own, may not have the same responsibility as the older generation. Undoubtedly, it would be beneficial if any card that they were carrying had additional information on next of kin, and perhaps other identifying marks of some importance.
	However, when we look at how information changes and for how long cards should exist, we must look at all the changes that take place in people's lives such, as the changes in name. My noble friend makes quite an important point. Can the Government answer it?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I have a feeling that we dealt in Committee with much of the detail to which the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, referred. If I miss something, I shall be more than happy to drop a note to those noble Lords who have participated in this mini-debate. The amendment would make the identity card valid for the life of the cardholder, rather than for a period to be decided by Parliament through regulation. I understand that it is designed to draw out more information from us, and we will do our best to answer the points in due course.
	It is currently intended that the identity card for a British national will be valid for 10 years, in line with the validity period for passports issued by the Passport Service. Generally, we take the view that to alter that to a lifelong validity would be impractical and undermine or damage the intended operation of the scheme. A person's characteristics do not stay static; they change over time. It is important that document issuers ensure that information relating to a person remains accurate and can be verified periodically. The practice of issuing documents such as passports with a time-limited validity period reflects that; so should the issuing of the identity card.
	The advent of biometrics, which may naturally change over a person's life, underlines the need for a limited validity card so that biometrics can be recorded to ensure the continuing accuracy of biometric verification. Additionally, identity cards for foreign nationals are intended also to serve as residence permits. So, a lifelong validity period, as sought in the amendment, would not be appropriate in our view. The card's validity should cease once the individual's leave to remain in the United Kingdom runs out.
	The identity card programme has been through, and completed, an extensive market sounding and card durability survey with leading international card and chip manufacturers. The manufacturers confirmed that a card life of 10 years is viable and provided evidence where they have guaranteed that card life. Studies by the Communication Electronics Security Group have also demonstrated that the durability of card security features remains over a 10-year period.
	As for death and ID cards, there is no requirement on a person who has died to notify their own death or, indeed, for his next of kin to notify the Secretary of State of it. I recall making that point at an earlier stage. The register will retain data on deceased people, primarily to prevent fraudulent use of a dead person's identity. We discussed, at an earlier stage, times when that has been the case in some celebrated past acts of criminality. There is no need for an ID card to survive its holder. It will be cancelled, and the Secretary of State has power to require its surrender under Clause 13.
	On the point about keeping things as family heirlooms, we often keep things from our past. I recently came across the papers from a deceased relative from the last world war, which included some rather sad pieces of paper and some interesting documents. I know that my mother kept her identity card from the war period. People are free to do that, but there is no obligation on people to keep documents for longer than they are required.
	As for time capsules, under Clause 13(3), it would be possible for the next of kin of an ID card holder who had died to seek the permission of the Secretary of State for then to retain the cancelled card, as now happens with passports.
	Another couple of points may have been raised that I have not covered relating to paying for renewal. In most of the circumstances anticipated by the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, it would be expected that a payment would be made for renewal. It would depend very much on what had happened—whether the card had been lost or stolen or whatever—whether the replacement card had to be paid for by a small charge. We intend to make it as easy as possible for people to replace lost or stolen documentation. I hope that, having heard that, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I do like to give pleasure to the Minister, and on this occasion I certainly can. I forgive the noble Lord, Lord Gould of Brookwood much. Never mind if it was a Second Reading speech; welcome back. He is the first Government Back-Bencher to speak today. He was speaking in support of the Government, so that was interesting. We have certainly missed him in our deliberations. I know that noble Lords were not able to take part in all six days in Committee, so there is absolutely no criticism of those who do not attend on each and every occasion. Had he been able to do so, however, he would have seen the Government's plans being pulled apart and some severe concerns being expressed. I know he has maintained throughout that the public profoundly want ID cards. The difficulty has been that it is a case of what ID cards and how. A recent survey on 18-20 November—I know the noble Lord is wedded to surveys, though I hope I may divorce him from them yet—showed a continued drop in support for ID cards to 50 per cent and a rise in public opposition to the Home Office scheme to 48 per cent. The gap is closing. Let's see what happens next.
	I return to the amendment. In thanking the Minister, I should like to explain that there is a flurry of amendments here that are probing in nature, as are all my amendments for the rest of the evening. I have made it clear that I wish to assist the Bill team and the Government in reaching Amendment No. 64E. During the dinner break, which the Minister in particular so richly deserves, I will look through to see which amendments I can pull, so we might even end a few minutes early. My overall reason for tabling these probing amendments is that I hope to be extremely sparing with my amendments when we get to Third Reading. I am extremely grateful to her, and she will not see these again. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Dykes: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government to ask Her Majesty's Government what proposals they will put forward for the creation of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
	My Lords, after the wise words of the Whip on duty on the Bench, it behoves me, unfortunately, to rattle through my remark to stay within the time limit. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I sound presumptuous in saying that the last thing I would want is to have to give way if anyone tried to intervene. That would also impair noble Lords' own chance of speaking for a couple of minutes.
	The Times newspaper, normally with an editorial line friendly towards Israel, said it all in its world news piece on 23 December: the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem now includes 15 checkpoints, so Joseph and Mary would have felt the need for patience on their passage. The route actually includes a portion of roadway where Palestinians generally are banned, even in their own territory. A tough friend of mine, an ex-rugby player type, recently visited the West Bank. He is used to harrowing scenes all over the world. I asked him for his reaction, and he simply replied: "I cried".
	I too went on the first ever IPU visit to the same areas in November to see the Palestinian National Authority, as well as going briefly to Israel. Our group was led by Sir Gerald Kaufman MP and included Roger Berry MP, Tom Levitt MP and the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. Incidentally, there was a brilliant debate in Westminster Hall with those MPs last Wednesday, and the first and third of them spoke in it very convincingly, as did David Winnick and Phyllis Starkey, echoing their concerns.
	I speak as a longstanding friend of Israel, as the noble Lord, Lord Janner, will know from our work together many years ago. I still remain a very enthusiastic fan of what I regard as a truly great and fascinating country. It is only the occupation policies in the occupied territories that I find unacceptable. The Sharon government were allowed by insouciant western and UN inaction in recent years to create an awful kind of open prison for the Palestinians—nearly 700 check points, new apartheid routes for Israeli use only, oppressive queues for shuffling Palestinian citizens and clogged up vehicles and, of course, the burgeoning illegal settlements. Near the old borders—the green line—they are virtually on every hill top. Hebron, for example, has become a bizarre ghost city.
	These severe restrictions are all over the West Bank, not only in areas near the border. They are all totally illegal under international law. Now we have the hideous wall as well, nearly complete, at huge cost to Israel's taxpayers. As we know, security preoccupations have been the reason given for all these developments. Ironically, the Israeli intelligence services have often opposed the dafter measures.
	If the Oslo accords had been adhered to, then the two countries could already have been on the path of stunning, peaceful co-operation, probably launching a near east common market and talking to other modern-minded Arabian countries nearby about getting together and working together.
	Let us look at these two countries now. I use the word "country" deliberately for Palestine because I want it to be one, and very soon. What happened, incidentally, to President Bush's solemn promise of a Palestinian state by the end of 2005? Has Pat Robertson sneaked into the White House briefings? Let us take Israel first—a country, as I say, much admired abroad despite its government's actions towards Palestine. Israel benefited quite rightly from huge world support when it was founded in 1948, endorsed by the UN with the Soviet Union a notable ally. Although the Palestinians lost large chunks of territory and were very bitter at the time, many look back at the mistake they made in not accepting, even if reluctantly, the partition proposals. Israel's existence and future welfare is a major inalienable piece of the near east mosaic for virtually all UN member states now—perhaps the president of Iran is a notable painful exception.
	As Israel was struggling it understandably received more and more support over the years. Finally, the USA ensured that Israel became the unbeatable military power in the whole area. Israel acquired nearly 200 nuclear bombs in strange circumstances and refuses to join the NPT effort. That is part of the wider scene. But, amazingly what America did not do reciprocally was to oblige Israel's governments successively to obey international law as the unbeatable military power and, after 1967, negotiate a peace and leave the territories of the Palestinians.
	The shameful record of well over 30 US vetoes, stopping Israel from such correct behaviour since 1967 tells its own tragic story. This record alone rendered the US unfit to assume its arbitrational role, but still the US and Israel insisted on this unique role, and everyone else was told to mind their own business.
	Meanwhile, the country, now of nearly 7 million people, including its Arab minority, has, I am very glad to say, prospered economically, also with huge US aid, despite being an advanced country. It offers a great deal to the world as an increasingly normal country in its own right, especially in the fields of medicine, high technology exports, sport, the arts, business acumen, aid and development to the third world, advice on agriculture, its own agricultural activity, trade union traditions and military equipment. The list is very long indeed. It was supposed to be a Zionist secular state, but the religious factor has increased enormously in recent years. I rejoice greatly when I observe all the forces of moderation in Israel who surely will insist on a peace treaty with Palestine as they realise more and more that that gives them the durable absence of terrorism which they understandably crave.
	I rejoice when I see the work of Daniel Barenboim, with his joint orchestra, of Steven Spielberg highlighting the futility of the endless cycle of violence, of Peace Now, with its impressive UK support committee, the brave actions of the Israeli ladies who monitor the checkpoints and the harsh behaviour of Israeli soldiers, the heroic work of Bets'Elem, the human rights group and the courageous Israeli military who protest against actions in the West Bank by the IDF. Happily, despite all this tragic history and background, and the awful developments on the West Bank, there are still many examples of Israeli-Palestinian co-operation. I wish I had time to mention some of those on that excellent list, which includes joint factories.
	Then we look at Palestine, with roughly half the population, including Gaza. It also has talented people, with a diaspora like that of Israel but much nearer geographically. Palestine has wonderful agriculture, although some of it is deprived through Israeli military action, as we know. Palestine has very good manufacturing companies and very good business people striking potential in a revived fishing sector, and excellent potential in natural gas assets, which belong to Palestine and not to Israel. Palestine also has an inevitably weak government, struggling, as Israel did in the early days, to establish themselves. But for some strange reason it does not receive the US help that Israel did. Palestine is now down to 22 per cent of the total land space.
	I find on visits that Palestinian civil society is very similar to that of its neighbour Israel, despite the wars, disputes, rows, setbacks, the intifadas and the IDF violence. The population has mostly remained overwhelmingly moderate Muslim and empirical. The official renunciation of terrorism has not been used by Israeli politicians properly. It is very sad to say that. Israel has had 1,000 casualties since the previous intifada, Palestine 4,000.
	Is it not high time that the other members of the quartet asserted themselves, bearing in mind US failure to act properly in getting the two countries together? We leave it to the Americans and I am afraid that we usually regret it afterwards nowadays. Anyway, even if that is a fanciful notion, bearing in mind the primordial stance of the United States in Israeli circles, it is obvious that the EU plans to make a real fuss of the Palestinians in the future by creating, for example, a favoured nation status with a new association agreement, will help to correct the hideous imbalance and asymmetry of power between the two. I remind the House that there are still nearly 8,000 detainees, most of whom have not been through court actions in Israel or elsewhere. Despite all this, Israeli public opinion is in favour of bringing back its settlers from the occupied territories, especially after the Gaza pull-out. We should look at the fascinating latest poll on east Jerusalem.
	How irresponsible it was, therefore, for the United States president—sadly, the worst in post-war history—to go back on the Sharm-el-Sheikh solemn agreement for the road map and unilaterally accept the exact words of Sharon in saying, first, that security concerns were a priority rather than concomitant with the other conditions, and, secondly, that the green line could be abandoned at a stroke to fit in with Likud's original plans for greater colonisation. In the immortal words of Gerald Kaufman,
	"if Sharon was a centrist, then God help Israel".
	Now, sadly and tragically, we will never know whether Sharon's mindset had really changed.
	In two days' time, thank goodness, we have the elections for the PLC, amid hopes that a more pragmatic Hamas, having at least diluted its charter aim to remove the Zionist state—its election literature does not include any references to that—will join in a positive managerial and technocratic government to relaunch the shamefully neglected road map framework once the Israeli elections have been held.
	I am convinced that Palestinian political restraint has kept new terrorist attacks to almost invisible levels in recent months despite some tragic incidents recently. Once a new government are formed in Israel after the end March elections, if members of the Security Council present a new resolution solemnly obliging the new Ministers to re-open the road map peace talks, will the US dare to veto that again? If so, madness will have definitely taken hold in Washington. It would be much better none the less to see both Israel and Palestine getting together without any United Nations Security Council pressure. Is that possible? It certainly should be if Israel's politicians are genuine about following up Gaza withdrawal with complete departure from the occupied territories, and renouncing the secret agreement made between Bush and Sharon last year. Given wisdom and foresight in Washington DC, Tel Aviv and Ramallah, I firmly believe that it is, despite the dreadful tragedy of recent years. The Palestinian economy must be rebuilt, including with EU support. I hope that the Minister will have time to list some examples of both British and EU plans.
	France and Germany came together in spectacular friendship and reconciliation after 1945. How can the Palestinians and the Israelis say that they cannot do the same?

The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I have two small points, since two minutes and the clerical mindset do not go easily together. First, the Ethical Investment Advisory Group of the Church of England, of which I am vice-chair, has recently had several searing months of exchange about investment in Caterpillar. That exposed us, as many Members of this House will be exposed in other connections, to intense lobbying on both sides of the argument and to an intense parade of the searing realities of the situation in Palestine and Israel. The first point I wish to make is that out of that discussion came the very strong intervention of the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, making the point that if there is to be a viable Palestinian state, it must also make provision for the retention of its Christian population. That is not something he holds against the Palestinian authority, but against the situation in which they now find themselves, and which is causing the steady depletion of the Christian population.
	Secondly, out of all the discussion about disinvestment came the very strong and, I think, very important, intervention of my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who is chair of the Council of Christians and Jews. It was a very non-partisan intervention. He said,
	"more important than disinvestment is that we should, together, be talking about investment, in the construction of both those countries; the enablement of both those countries to flourish; and create economies that can, because they have the aspirations and possibilities, be co-operative."
	If we do not do that, if we simply apply sticks to the situation and no carrots, it is very unlikely that there will be progress. I hope that this is an aspect to which Her Majesty's Government will give very serious attention.

Lord Janner of Braunstone: My Lords, I have just returned from a visit to the Middle East, where I talked to and listened to the leaders—Palestinians, Arabs and Israelis. They have one thing in common: they want peace for their people. The question is: how do you achieve peace now? How do you achieve peace, for example, in the face of Hamas retaining in its charter, not as the noble Lord, Lord Dykes pointed out, the demand for the destruction of Israel? Yes, they have removed it from election material, under pressure, but it is still there. They are still a terrorist organisation. How do the Israelis make peace with them? How do they make peace in the face of suicide bombing? Last week, in the middle of the election campaign, suicide bombers murdered innocent people by a bus station in the middle of Tel Aviv. How can they find people to work with? There are excellent senior Palestinians who want peace and we must hope that they will be at the head of their nation after their election this coming week.
	I know, because I have met most of them—leaders of Palestinians and Israelis, Jordanians and Egyptians—that above all they recognise and require and demand the right for their people to live in peace and without fear. As an Arab proverb has it, this cannot be done "on one hand alone." There is no way in which you can have a handshake with one hand alone; both sides must want it. Ehud Olmert and Shimon Peres have taken over together; I know them and they are both peaceniks, both people who seek to find ways to peace. They are both very bright people. They need a partner; they need from the Palestinians people who will work together with them for peace, for a better world for both their peoples to live in; to ensure that there is an advance of democracy; a right of people to vote; a right of people to live in peace; and a right for the terrorists to be removed from Hamas and others who are in authority in Palestine or any other Arab land.

Lord Wright of Richmond: My Lords, on the eve of the Palestinian elections, can we for a moment again consider the situation in the Palestinian Occupied Territories? Even Gaza has been described, after the Israeli withdrawal, as "one big prison." The United States special envoy, James Wolfensohn, has accused Israel of acting as though there had been no withdrawal. To echo the question of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, how do the Palestinians make peace in these circumstances?
	In the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Palestinians are still under virtual siege, with the continuing intrusion of the so-called security fence; the isolation of West Bank cities; and the continuing expansion of illegal settlements. Even the United States has criticised the controversial E-1 plan, which not only houses some 34,000 settlers, but allows for a further 14,000. Is it surprising that we are seeing increasing radicalisation of the Palestinians, who face a decreasing prospect of the viable and contiguous Palestinian state envisaged by the road map?
	I hope that the Minister can help us to expect some genuine and positive action from the quartet. I hope that she can confirm that, if Hamas does indeed secure a significant share of the vote, that would not mean any lessening of EU financial and political support for the Palestinian authority, and, whatever the outcome of these elections, we will be ready to deal with whatever authority emerges. The situation of the Palestinians is appalling and getting worse. It is time that the international community woke up to its responsibilities. If we do not, the future for both Israel and Palestine is bleak.

Lord Winston: My Lords, I too pay tribute to our Government, who have done a notable job in keeping their counsel wisely and quietly, and doing their very best in the Middle East. In this Chamber as outside it—not in this debate, I am very pleased to say; laudably—extreme views often have not helped the purposes of peace in the Middle East. I hope that one of the things that we might do in this country is to be aware of the need for careful debate rather than the sort of florid hate debate that we so often hear.
	One of the key problems at the moment is the huge difficulty for the Palestinians. They basically want good health and hygiene, better local government, security, a normal sort of existence and, above all, prosperity. Sometimes in the past, their prosperity depended on employment in Israel. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, railed against the security fence, but that is an inevitability given the risks to the Israeli citizen at the present time. It is not unique. An 1,800-mile security fence exists in India and Pakistan. There is a security fence between Saudi Arabia and Yemen; there is a fence in Kyrgyzstan; and there is a fence in parts of Malaysia. Sadly, there are fences all over the world because of the threats of violence. I hope that that situation will change, but it is difficult to see that when one has the risk, on the one hand, of a very corrupt government, led by Fatah, and, on the other, a government who are notoriously, apparently, implacably opposed to Israel existing at all. That remains a major problem. We can only hope that that will change, but we must be cautious and make certain that the kind of words that we use do not inflame the situation.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for tabling this timely debate. Its importance is underlined by the number of speakers. It is clear that a longer debate is needed and I trust that we will have one in the near future, perhaps to coincide with the important elections in Israel.
	As many noble Lords have said, this is a key moment for the peace process, with the first elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council since 1996 due to take place in just two days. The actions of the legislative council and of the Palestinian Authority in the coming weeks and months will truly have a significant impact on the viability of a future Palestinian state, as will developments in Israel.
	The noble Lords, Lord Wright, Lord Janner and Lord Mitchell, understandably raised the issue of Hamas. As my noble friend Lord Triesman stated in the House last week, our position is clear: we welcome the participation of a wide range of parties in all elections, and it must be for the people of the area to make their decisions. That is democracy; but I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to comment at this stage on the outcome of the elections.
	However, after the elections, together with the international community, we will of course have to consider our position. I should make it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Wright, that the recent suspension of EU funding has nothing to do with the elections. That decision was taken last month because the Palestinian Authority has not met the financial benchmarks that have been agreed. However, we hope that disbursement will be possible in the spring or summer. I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Astor, that that is a good example of the way that we are trying to ensure that the Palestinian Authority works in a much more financially accountable way.
	My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said in another place on 29 November that the prospects for peace in the Middle East were better now than at any time in the past four and a half years.
	Much has happened since then, including the tragic illness of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His plan for disengagement from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank was a significant first step towards the creation of a separate and viable state of Palestine, alongside a secure state of Israel. Naturally the Government welcome all efforts to bring that about at government and official level. We salute what has been happening.
	We also salute and pay tribute to those working with civil society. My noble friend Lady Hayman referred to One Voice, which is a fine example of an organisation that is nurturing understanding and trust across borders. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, mentioned the sterling work of Daniel Barenboim and many others. He is right to say that both Israel and the state of Palestine would have much to offer both as people and the wider world.
	We fully support the work of Quartet special envoy, James Wolfensohn, in following up that plan to support the Palestinian Authority in creating strong and viable institutions to improve the economy and governance. That is imperative for the future of the peace process. My noble friend Lord Bernstein and other noble Lords referred to the need to create jobs because unemployment has been such a problem in the Palestinian Authority. I am pleased to report that we fully support the job creation initiatives of Mr Wolfensohn. In working with UNRA, we assisted with the creation of 7,000 jobs in the West Bank and Gaza last year, and we hope that a further 14,000 will be created in 2006.
	As part of the road map commitments, the Palestinian Authority is undertaking a series of comprehensive political reforms in preparation for statehood, including drafting a constitution, and free, fair and open elections. The elections have given a renewed democratic mandate to the PA. The EU supports this process and has sent a substantial election-monitoring mission. We are pleased with the progress being made, but more concerted action needs be taken by the PA to take these initiatives forward to make their institutions credible. We, along with the international community, will do all that we can to help, but it is up to the PA to push the agenda forward. As my noble friend Lord Winston said, the Palestinian people want normality.
	The security situation in the West Bank—especially Gaza—is a cause of growing concern. The PA needs to take steps to effectively tackle terrorism and impose law and order for the sake of wider peace, but just as importantly in the interests of its own people. The work of James Wolfensohn and US security co-ordinator, General Dayton, and his predecessor, General Ward, has been vital. The Palestinian Authority has begun the task of strengthening the capacity of its security forces. The challenge is huge, but the international community, including the UK, is providing active support.
	As my noble friends Lady Ramsay and Lord Hogg have noted, the EU has been, and will continue to be, a key investor and catalyst for change in the region, helping to bring about much needed reform. The EU is strengthening its EUCOPPS programme to help transform the Palestinian civil police. Our focus is not just on security but on working to ensure the long-term economic viability of a Palestinian state. Last month Her Majesty's Treasury and the World Bank jointly hosted a conference called, "Promoting Economic Growth in the West Bank and Gaza through the Private Sector". It brought members of the business community together to discuss options for investment in Gaza and the West Bank.
	A strong economy will provide Palestinians with greater opportunities, more jobs and ultimately, prosperity. The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right when he says that we must focus on investment. That is what Her Majesty's Government are doing, and will continue to do. We certainly have not been waiting for the elections to foster prosperity, as has been suggested. We have been working bilaterally and with our EU partners for many years.
	Also last month, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office co-chaired the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, the international co-ordinating body for donors, attended by the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The meeting focused on economic developments in 2005, Palestinian reform and mid-term development planning and looking ahead to a possible pledging conference in spring 2006. Most delegates concluded that they were willing to provide the Palestinian Authority with more assistance but that more work was needed from the PA to ensure that the money that it is given would be used effectively, to create stronger institutions and improve the conditions for wider prosperity.
	A key aspect of long term economic viability is access to the outside world, and freedom of movement within the Occupied Territories, as regards which Israel has an important role to play. Last November's agreement on movement and access, including the opening of the Gaza-Egypt border crossing, was a huge step forward. The Rafah crossing point has remained open since 15 November, with the first truck loaded with merchandise leaving Gaza for Egypt on 19 December. The EU has played a vital role in allowing that to happen, providing a standing team of monitors able to vouch for the proper functioning of the agreement and building confidence between the two parties.
	Together with improvements to the movement of goods between Gaza and Israel, those seemingly technical issues are making an important contribution to creating a viable Palestinian state. We hope that other parts of the agreement can be implemented soon, most notably the opening of the sea and air ports—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton—but also truck convoys between Gaza and the West Bank. It is of course for the parties themselves to discuss parts of the agreement such as the construction of the airport and the seaport, but both sides have naturally been preoccupied with the elections. However, we trust that as soon as soon as the election period is over they will resume dialogue on the issue.
	Both the Israelis and Palestinians remain committed to implementing the road map. As my noble friend Lady Symons said, we must be frank with both sides, but we must pay tribute when they have achieved many great things. Considerable further action is required from the Palestinian Authority on security issues, good governance and the economy, but there is also more that Israel could do. The road map is clear that Israel should freeze all settlement activity including the natural growth of existing settlements, and dismantle all outposts built since March 2001. Settlement building is contrary to international law and is an obstacle to peace.
	There is more that Israel could do to increase confidence and help ensure the viability of a future Palestinian state. We hope that Israel can ease restrictions on movement and access to all parts of Gaza and the West Bank. That includes dismantling checkpoints and roadblocks; all "Marys and Josephs" should be able to pass. The route of the barrier must be amended to ensure that it is on or behind the Green Line. It is illegal for the barrier to be built on occupied land. We have raised our concerns about that with the Israeli Government on many occasions, and we will continue to do so.
	We have also made clear our concerns about Israeli policies in Jerusalem, which threaten to cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Those policies include the routing of the barrier on Occupied Territory, settlement activity both within and around East Jerusalem, and increasingly restricted access to Jerusalem for Palestinian residents who have blue Israeli identity cards but who live east of the barrier. That risks Palestinian territorial contiguity throughout the West Bank. Those practices fuel Palestinian anger, threaten to cut East Jerusalem off from the West Bank and make it more difficult for there to be a viable Palestinian state.
	In response to the noble Lord, Lord Astor, who mentioned Iran and the non-proliferation treaty, the British Government have on a number of occasions called on Israel and other states who accede to the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states and to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and we will continue to do so. We take appropriate opportunities to discuss all aspects of non-proliferation with representatives of Israel and other governments.
	We believe that the road map remains the best way forward in creating a two- state nation and the establishment of a just and lasting peace, but both parties need to fulfil their obligations in order for that to become a reality. The road map provides for a viable and secure state of Palestine and a secure state of Israel, consistent with UN Security Council resolutions and the principle of land for peace. The coming period will be politically charged for both parties, but I hope and trust that their commitment to the principles of the road map will remain undiminished.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, for his courteous response. He has not actually given me reassurance overall, but certainly reassurance enough to withdraw the amendment. I think it has proved to me two things. The first is the importance of tackling this issue from another angle—that is, looking at the audit trail. The noble Lord; Lord Phillips of Sudbury, tabled an amendment on our first day in Committee with regard to the paragraph 9 of the schedule. I want to look at that again as an important way of tackling this. Secondly, the Minister was far too courteous to point out that my amendment did not achieve what I was trying to achieve anyway. He gave me the answer that I needed, even if I did not like it and even though I had tabled the wrong amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Presented and read a first time.
	House adjourned at half-past nine o'clock.
	Monday, 23 January 2006.